


The Lost Tales of Ba Sing Se

by The_Bastard_Writer



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 2: Earth (Avatar), Canon up to Book 2, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, First Dates, First Kiss, First Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 12:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30055629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Bastard_Writer/pseuds/The_Bastard_Writer
Summary: Azula was born a fire bending prodigy, a killer for the fire nation, the perfect princess and ultimate warrior. In all her fourteen years of life, she had never known love, any thought of such an emotion was weakness, until she met the last air bender. Now after successfully infiltrating Ba Sing Se she is planning the most important military operation of her life, and can't stop thinking about her worst enemy.On the other side of the city, Aang faces many struggles. One of them being his position as Avatar and becoming the hero the world needs him to be. The other, how do you tell a girl you like her? how do you ask her out? And what do you do when that same girl won't stop trying to kill you?
Relationships: Aang/Azula (Avatar)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	The Lost Tales of Ba Sing Se

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN AVATAR OR ANY OF ITS CHARACTER, THIS IS FOR LOVE NOT PROFIT

“Oh for Agni’s sake Azula, it wasn’t that good of a kiss anyway,”  
The fire princess told herself, much louder than she intended too.

“Azula, what happened, what's going on”

As she feared, her lack of self control woke up her most annoying friend Ty Lee.

“She’s just talking to herself about the Avatar again, go back to sleep”  
The voice of her most annoyed friend Mai added to the sound that had overtaken their once quiet night.

“Enough both of you,”  
Azula barked at the two closest things she had to friends. 

“Whatever”  
Mai’s tired voice responded. 

It was followed by the sound of Ty Lee turning over in what Azula assumed was her bed. She could hear her mutter something about her waking her up and not even wanting to talk. As usual Azula didn’t care. 

The whole situation bothered the young fire princess, she was trained to master her abilities as a fire bender and a warrior, but this, this was foriegn, and though she would never admit it, it all made Azula very nervous. 

It wasn’t like this before, she thought to herself, as stood on the balcony outside her rooms overlooking the vast city of Ba Sing Se.

Before, she paused mid thought, Azula had been going in circles for over a month.

Before it happened and the incidents that followed, she never had to think about issues such as these. Her mind was focused and sharp as a blade forged by the sharpest smiths in the fire nation and now, she shuddered for a moment, physically bringing her arms to her shoulders as if she was cold. 

And now her mind had become dull, as if the blade it was had become blunted by several strikes against a stone each one bending it more out of shape then the next. Each thought another strike and each strike another circle, and every circle the further she spun out of control. 

Regaining her composure, she moved her hands from her shoulders and attempted to place them gently along the railing of the balcony. Azula’s palms hurt and she could feel them turning red from the way she inadvertently slammed them against the stone railing. 

Before she met that boy, that soft childish waste of power, she was never like this, but everyday since it happened she had become less and less the fire princess she thought she knew and more something else. 

Something that she couldn’t recognize, something that confused her, and in the dark spaces in her mind scared her. 

Azula met the Avatar in, if not for him, what would have been the city of New Ozai. She could still see him when she closed her eyes, a skittish looking boy, around her age, only he carried himself like a kid and she as a princess. 

True to her nature, her first interaction started with her sending a wave of blue flame his way and when she watched him use his air bending to easily dodge the fiery death it was the beginning of the end of the girl she was. Not that she knew that then. 

At that moment, all he had done was spark her interest, something that was difficult to do but not impossible. 

Seizing a chance to once again triumph over her elder brother, Azula tried to kill the Avatar, chasing after him through the city as he attempted to escape with that old and crazy king of Omashu. 

It was the chase, a magnificent and epic chase worthy of the stories of old that spelled the doom of her former self. After months of endless reflection and running circles upon circles in her mind it was that moment, she was sure of it. 

Staring into the moon above Ba Sing Se, she could see him dodge her many attempts to end his life, the way he moved, the way he manipulated the air itself to his will, it was nothing less than beautiful. 

Azula shuddered again, bringing her arms back from the railing to her shoulders as if the feel of her hands would somehow make it stop. 

Ever since that chase, the fight, the Avatar entered her mind and refused to leave no matter how much she tried to force him out. Worse with each new incident he spread his will further across her thoughts, like an invading fire nation army he burned his way through her days and nights and had started to work his way into her minutes and hours. 

“I should have just went home, when I had the chance,”  
This Azula whispered to herself, hoping to avoid waking her somewhat friends again. 

Her theory had flaws and she knew it, but it didn’t stop her from going back to it almost nightly. Had she just turned around, returned to the fire nation, begged her father’s forgiveness for her failure at Omashu, then all of this, whatever it was, could be avoided.

Instead, Azula did the opposite, not knowing what her thoughts really meant, confusing them for anger and contempt, she went after the Avatar pursuing him relentlessly. That was the first hole in her theory. It was only weeks ago that she gave up her poor attempt at denial, and admitted it was her interest in him that led her to pursue him in the first place. 

Had it been anyone else, any other enemy, she could have sent a whole army after him, but for some reason she didn’t, she wouldn’t, she couldn't. At the time she told herself it was because she needed to defeat him, his escape sticking out as an ugly smudge on her otherwise flawless record. She had killed earth benders, water benders, even other fire benders, but never an air bender. Azula fooled herself into believing that if she could fight him, just one more time, then that would do it. Watching his flesh sizzle and his bones collapse, all forming a neat pile of ash, that was all that was needed to make things right like they were...before. 

Then it happened, she got her wish and fought him again. The second incident as Azula liked to call it in her mind. 

In a ghost town somewhere in the middle of nowhere, she faced him once more. 

Azula had expected to see him angry, she had chased him for over a month and had worked very hard to give him little to no sleep. She assumed the frustration at being chased would be enough to peel back that goofy smile of his, the smile that had haunted her throughout her pursuit. 

Once again, she was wrong, something the Avatar was making her much more used to then she would have liked. Azula was shocked to see the powerful bender appear confident despite his obvious exhaustion. 

Azula was momentarily lost for words, something she was far from used to, so quickly she fell back on her strengths. Using her attitude and her self described wicked sense of humor, she made a joke at her elder brother’s expense. The joke fell flat and she was secretly thankful at her brother’s interruption. The Avatar did laugh when she called her brother Zuzu, Azula didn’t know why that stuck out, why that mattered to her, but it did.

She called them incidents because she couldn’t think of another word for them that didn’t bother her or make her anxious in some way. The second incident did make her more anxious and bothered than the first, but like the first it was glorious. 

Never in her life had she been more challenged, it was a fight, a duel, a real battle where she had to use every skill she possessed just to keep up.

Azula started to pace back and forth on the balcony, every circle involved this, an endless cycle of replaying the incidents in her mind as if she was going to discover something that made them meaningless and in doing so put her circles to an end. 

Stupid Zuzu, Azula was thankful that it was a familiar thought but when she followed it now led back to the second incident. He interrupted her battle with the Avatar, he got in the way and made a fool out of himself. She wasn’t surprised that he made a fool out of himself, he had been doing that all her life, but why did he have to do it when she was with the Avatar. 

For weeks she blamed her elder brother for the whole situation, had he not gotten in the way of her fight with the Avatar then she would have killed him and have been back to her old self. Instead she was unable to sleep as her mind kept going around and around these circles. 

Looking down at her feet bare against the cold stone that made up the buildings in Ba Sing Se she hoped that her mind could travel back to the places it used to go. Thoughts of conquest and victory over the Fire Nation’s enemies. Here she was, Azula, standing in the middle of the capital of the Earth Nation preparing to take the city. To do something her uncle the supposed Dragon of the West could not. She would be the new dragon, Azula the dragon princess. 

The circle of her victory over the Earth Nation and her rise to dragon status spun so fast her mind ran through it instead of around it and to her dismay she was back. Back to her incidents, and thoughts of the Avatar and his superb fighting ability. She remembered the moment she ran after him into a building thinking she had him on the run only to nearly fall through a collapsed floor, her eyes looking up at a smiling Avatar as he hovered in front of her on a bubble of air. The feeling she got when he didn’t die, when he fought her despite how tired he surely was, she didn’t know what to call that feeling and she dared not ask. 

It was the third and final incident that kept Azula up at night, not that the other incidents didn’t attack her sleep, but the last one had succeeded in defeating it once and for all. 

Azula shook her head as she realized her mind was about to come full circle. 

She had been doing so well since the second incident. After a brief bout of frustration from her inability to kill her uncle, she pulled herself together and focused on taking Ba Sing Se. Summoning a gigantic siege drill, she was going to smash right through the infamous walls that had kept her nation out for a century. Then the Avatar came with his water peasants and the blind earth bender, ready to spoil her plans.

Only days ago did she admit to herself that she had expected him to come and despite the multiple times she had encountered the thought through this part of the circle, Azula wasn’t ready to acknowledge she was hoping he would try and stop her. 

The Avatar did not disappoint, he came and finally she had him all to herself, no crazy old earth king or stupid Zuzu. 

Azula felt her cheeks twitch and her lips shift, she was smiling at the thought, and she really hated when she did that. Closing her eyes she saw them again.

There they were, the Fire Princess and the Avatar, the fire and air prodigies, face to face on top of the drill that was slowly making its way through the Ba Sing Se wall. 

First she sent a wave of fire, then he replied with a gust of air, she returned with more fire this time coming from the soles of her feet which he extinguished with water that he sent back at her. Azula could feel her arms and legs move as she mentally relived the duel. 

Then it came, just as it had the dozens if not hundreds of times it had come when the circle in her mind neared its completion. The moment everything fell apart in a way she could barely comprehend and would have denied ever happened if it had not been burnt into her memory. 

Azula had overcome his water bending attacks and despite facing some of the best earth bending she had ever seen, she had managed to close the distance. With a spinning fire kick, a maneuver she had personally perfected, she had managed to blast her way through his wall of rocks. The rock wall exploded and the Avatar flew backwards slamming hard into the now crumbling wall of Ba Sing Se. 

Victory was hers, Azula came upon the Avatar who was still down from her attack. She lifted him up by his collar and then it happened. She had spent hours trying to figure out what caused it, was it the heat of the day, the adrenaline from the battle, her fire nation warrior spirit, was she simply excited over her impending victory or happy to finally be rid of the Avatar. After so many circles Azula had no answers.

All the fire princess had was the memory and the feeling. With the Avatar literally in her grasp, instead of killing him like she should, she brought him to her level and forced her lips against his. 

Azula felt herself become light headed at the thought and nearly lost her balance at the memory. 

It was rushed, it was rough, it was hard, it was violent, it was her first kiss. 

Until that moment, Azula had never in her life experienced the feeling of so many emotions at once, anger, confusion, interest, excitement, nervousness, and many other emotions she was far from ready to give names to yet. 

The battle went on and ended in another defeat at the hands of the Avatar, but her circle always stopped at that infernal kiss. 

Looking out from the balcony, her eyes open taking in the view of the biggest city she had ever seen, Azula knew that Avatar was out there.

Azula swore to herself, as a princess of the fire nation, she would not become some foolish girl swooning over a boy no matter how stunningly powerful he is, she was going to find him and she was going to kill him, and be done with this situation and all its incidents once and for all.


End file.
